My Current Favorites

Five books, movies, or songs influencing me now

Watership Down: A Novel

by Richard Adams

WHY I LIKE IT

Although this book came out when I was a boy, I avoided reading it until this year. A story about rabbits in England? No thanks, too twee for me.
But it turned out to be nothing like what I expected. It's a thrilling tale about community and commitment—and rabbits as brave and clever warriors!

Yet another book by a pastor about the gospel? Yeah, I know what you're thinking—and it's the reason this book sat on my shelf unread for the past few years. But I recently started reading it and am glad I did. Greear is an excellent communicator. He brings a fresh approach to the topic that will reenergize you and get you excited about the gospel.

Did you see the movie 'Arrival'? It was based on a wonderful short story written by Chiang and included in this book. And it's not even the best of the bunch. This is a great collection for fans of science fiction. But even if your don't care for the sci-fi genre get a copy and read the first story, "Tower of Babylon," an amazing and creative expansion on the story of the Tower of Babel.

Imagine if Flannery O'Connor had written a post-apocalyptic zombie novel and you'll get a sense of this fascinating story. One of my favorite lines: "It’s a wonder how he’s trackin me, but you can’t put nothing past these southern boys. They just sit around waiting for somebody to kill their brother so they can get started on some vengeance. It’s like a dang vocation with them."

If you consider yourself a generalist (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-to-glorify-god-by-being-a-generalist) you'll want to read this one. Johnson has an amazing ability to find connections between things they we would have never considered. Example: "Gutenberg made printed books relatively cheap and portable, which triggered a rise in literacy, which exposed a flaw in the visual acuity of a sizable part of the population, which then created a new market for the manufacture of spectacles."

My Essentials

My all-time favorite books, movies and music

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history)

WHY I LIKE IT

A 900 page history on pre-revolutionary American "folkways" (the way of life of a particular community) may not sound like thrilling Summer reading. But after reading this review (http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/) I gave it a chance and found it completely enthralling. If you have any interest at all in early American history, you won't want to miss this book. (The chapters are subdivided and well-organized around recurring themes, making it much easier to read in small portion.)
Sample: 90% of Puritan names were taken from the Bible. Some Puritans took pride in their learning by giving their children obscure Biblical names they would expect nobody else to have heard of, like Mahershalalhasbaz. Others chose random Biblical terms that might not have technically been intended as names; “the son of Bostonian Samuel Pond was named Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin Pond”. Still others chose Biblical words completely at random and named their children things like Maybe or Notwithstanding.

In January I decided to read the Harry Potter series, and figured I'd complete one novel a year. Instead I devoured them all in 6 months. As a fan of Narnia-style fantasy, I'm not sure why I waited to long to read them. They really do live up to the hype.

How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society

by C. John Sommerville

WHY I LIKE IT

As Christians, we're expected to take an eternal perspective, viewing events not only in their historical but also in their eschatological context. But as Sommerville explains in this indispensable work of media criticism, we can't do that while focusing on the churning events of the last 24 hours news cycle.